LOVE IN THE TIME OF DISPLACMENT

As I am writing this I am listening to Les Feuilles Mortes, by Andrea Bocelli and it speaks to me. like so many things in my life it must all come to an end. I am going to try my utmost best to steer away from morbidity, but I write what I feel, most times.

I am an emotional being. Not in the sense of breaking down and crying or throwing tantrums. No, I am more the emotionally broody kind that often don't speak about how I feel, but tend to write about my inner most feelings.

You see, I grew up in a traditional home, where men were men and we had our roles very firmly defined. We had a uniformed way in which we processed all things that affected us and mostly we looked to our father as the navigator of our emotions.

Suffice to say that from an early stage crying was seen as a sign of weakness. Not because my dear father said so, but simply because we got on with life and we did what we had to, to move forward.

I find that I am lot like my parents as I grow older...for the better these days. The last few weeks have been very difficult. It has been emotionally draining. But it has also forced me to really sit still and do some deep introspection.

I am selling the family house, which I bought from my father a few years back and closing this cycle of my life. My folks are moving to a retirement home and they seem happy and excited at the prospect of being with folks their age from complete different backgrounds.

Packing up your family home is like holding memories in your hands and deciding which you would hold on to and which you will discards. Some are happy memories, others just tear open wounds best left in the past.

Be that as it may. There is something liberating about embarking on this journey and completing it. We so often run from our memories and we store them in places in our head and we carry them with us and have no control over them. Sometimes they pop up and become a destructive force we cannot speak to. But when we clean up house, when we hold memories and pack them away in boxes and look at them and speak with them. We begin to understand why. The questions we have are only answered by those memories we hold in our hands.

I am reminded of the tangibility of memories. My family home has been the centre of my universe. It was a place where I not only lived. It formed me the man I am today, far more than other experiences. In this place we lost a brother, a father, a son. We celebrated our family heritage year after year and we cemented and we had what so many other sought. But we also became contemptuous of each other and we disagreed, disappointed and at times loathed each other. But we always came back to one another.

As I sit in the lounge and we are packing the last of the ceramic dogs and taking down curtains and looking at each other with joy and sadness, I wonder if what feels at times like displacement will bring us closer together?

I look through the lounge window, Che is playing outside with Cody. They got rugby on their mind and Che seem oblivious at the impending movement.

I wish sometime I still processed like a child. But it is his time now, soon he will see the world through our eyes. But I am at peace...I have no choice. This cycle of my life has brought to where I am suppose to be.

Peace & Love

GAH the Truthseeker